Heart disease, including myocardial infarction, is a leading cause of death and impaired activity in human beings, particularly in the western world, most particularly among males. Heart disease can in turn degrade other physiological systems.
A stenosed or blocked coronary artery is one example of heart disease. A totally blocked, or substantially blocked coronary artery can cause immediate, intermediate term, and long-term problems. In the immediate term, myocardial cells can be starved of oxygen resulting in cell death. In the intermediate term, the cell death can “cascade”, leading to cell death in adjacent cells. In the long term, the myocardial cell death, which creates weakened, non-contracting infarct regions of the heart, can lead to heart failure.
The immediate effects of a blocked coronary artery can be addressed through percutaneous coronary transluminal angioplasty (PCTA). PCTA can be used to dilate an occluded coronary artery, often in conjunction with stenting, to provide perfusing blood flow to cardiac cells downstream of the blockage. More intermediate term damage can be addressed through the systemic or local delivery of agents to reduce or treat the cells affected by the initial injury. The longer-term problems, for example, heart failure resulting from infarct cardiac tissue, can be addressed by the systemic or local delivery of medical agents to the cardiac tissue.
The direct delivery of agents to cardiac tissue is often preferred over the systemic delivery of such agents for several reasons. One reason is the substantial expense and small amount of the medical agents available, for example, agents used for gene therapy. Another reason is the substantially greater concentration of such agents that can be delivered directly into cardiac tissue, compared with the dilute concentrations possible through systemic delivery. Yet another reason is the undesirability or impossibility of systemically delivering agents to the heart tissue requiring treatment.
One mode of delivery for medical agents to myocardial tissue has been an epicardial, direct injection into myocardial tissue during an open chest procedure. Open chest procedures are inherently traumatic procedures with associated risks. The risks are often justified when the alternatives are a substantially high probability of death. In many cases, however, an open chest procedure is not believed justifiable only for the injection of medical agents into the myocardium.
Another approach taken to deliver medical agents into the myocardium has been an intravascular approach. Catheters may be advanced through the vasculature and into the heart to inject materials into myocardial tissue from within the heart. This approach may not allow all areas of the heart to be easily reached however. The size and type of instruments that can be advanced, for example, from a femoral artery approach, are also limited.
One relatively new therapy for treating infarcted cardiac tissue includes the injection of cells that are capable of maturing into actively contracting cardiac muscle cells. Examples of such cells include myocytes, mesenchymal stem cells, and pluripotent cells. Delivery of such cells into the myocardium is believed to be beneficial, particularly to prevent heart failure. Current intravascular delivery devices are less than optimal, being limited in the cardiac regions they can reach and the amount and types of materials they can deliver. Open chest procedures allow access to a larger range of cardiac tissue and also allow the delivery of greater varieties and amounts of agents, for example, cells. An open chest procedure may not be justifiable, however, only for the injection of such cells. In particular, patients having suffered a recent heart attack may be very poor candidates for such a procedure.
What would be desirable are improved devices that can be used to inject medical agents, for example, cells, into myocardial tissue without requiring an open chest procedure. In particular, devices enabling a minimally invasive cell delivery into myocardial tissue would be most advantageous.